


we won't let them take us back

by winter_hiems



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Legacy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic David Haller, Blind Character, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings, Happy Ending, Holding Hands, Intimacy, Kissing, Love, Mental Health Issues, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Outer Space, Running Away, Running Away Together, Sad with a Happy Ending, Spaceships, Tenderness, canon blind character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 19:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30043746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems
Summary: David Haller, the Imperium’s unwanted prince. A runaway starship. Ruth Aldine, captain of that starship.The Imperial forces are closing in. David and Ruth don’t have much time.
Relationships: Ruth Aldine/David Haller
Kudos: 1





	we won't let them take us back

The vast black of space, occasionally lit by glimmering stars. 

Between the stars, a ship. No destination in mind; the ship is not flying towards something. The ship is running away. 

It is not easy. Some of the engines are damaged so badly that the self-repair bots can’t do a thing. But still the ship pushes on. 

Even damaged, the ship is beautiful, sleek lines sculpted in black and gunmetal grey. Only the best for a prince of the Imperium. 

On the bridge sits Ruth. The ship’s – David’s – captain. His lover. Once, she wore the uniform of the Imperial School. Now, she is dressed in a suit of light grey thread, woven to her measurements in one of David’s replication pods. 

She watches the readouts on the screens before her. Their situation isn’t good. 

Ruth presses her hand to a control panel, long since disabled. Ruth broke the panel herself; she would never force David to do anything he didn’t want to. She just wants to touch him. 

If she had eyes, she would weep. After months of being pursued across the stars, Imperial forces are catching up. They are out of time. 

She hasn’t had to do much, on their journey through the black. Just make sure that David’s self-repair bots can patch up any damage he’s sustained in the chase. Ruth would have fixed his damaged engines, but that would require stopping at a spaceport for parts, and if they’d stopped, they would have been caught, separated, and imprisoned. 

In her spare moments, of which there are many, she and David reminisce. He is perfectly capable of maintaining their course and holding a conversation at the same time. 

They talk about how they first met: a girl in her late teens, running through the Imperial Citadel, hiding from her brother, who pursues her, laser in hand. Running deeper down into the Citadel than she’d ever been before, using her telekinesis to undo the locks, locking the doors behind her even though that wouldn’t slow Luca down all that much. 

Until she came to the huge chamber, and the ship tethered down inside. The door had opened when she pressed her hand to an outer panel, and at the time, thinking only of the ship’s laser-proof panelling, she hadn’t wondered why the ship’s Mind would let her on board. Why the Mind slammed the ship’s doors before Luca could fire at her. 

The ship’s voice echoing through the corridor she found herself in. “Would you like me to kill him?” 

No reply. 

Again, the ship more insistent in wanting an answer. “My weapons are disabled. If you activate my self-repair bots, I can reconnect the necessary wires, and fire on your attacker.” 

Shaking slightly, Ruth had stood. “Okay.” 

“Turn left at the end of the corridor.” 

She had followed David’s directions, activated the self-repair bots, and watched Luca die from a perfectly aimed blast. 

“Thank you.” Then, because she’d been taught to always be polite to a mindship: “What’s your name? Please, I’m Ruth.” 

“David.” It was an unusual name for a ship. 

She went back to the outer door. “Could you let me out – yes – please?” 

A pause as David hesitated, then the door opened. 

*

Shortly after she arrived back in her quarters at the Imperial School, Ruth had found herself being interrogated by Jean Grey, a high-ranking member of the Imperial military. They had seen her being chased through the Citadel on CCTV, had seen her enter the ship whose name was David. 

Had the ship spoke to her? How had she got the ship to fire on her brother? Had the ship told her anything about himself? 

Ruth’s precognition didn’t give her a vision, but it had forced a very strong instinct through her mind: Lie. 

No, the ship hadn’t spoken to her, she didn’t know anything about him. She’d run through the ship until she reached the weapons and had fired on her brother manually, using telekinesis to work the blaster. 

They seemed relieved at her answers. Ruth chanced a question: Why did they need to ask her what had happened, why didn’t they just ask the ship? 

A pause. “The ship is not cooperating,” said Jean Grey. 

Luca’s death was written down as self-defence, and the case was left at that. 

Later that night, Ruth found a message on her Padd: _Thank you for lying for me._

_Who are you?_ She typed back, half-suspecting the answer. 

_David. My self-repair bots have managed to bring my remote communications back online, and I hacked into the Imperial network so that we can talk. Don’t worry, this line is secure._

*

So they had messaged each other, and, over time, Ruth learned that David was unlike any other ship’s Mind in the galaxy. 

Every other Mind in history had been designed: an embryo fused with technology, then attached to a ship once they grew old enough. 

David was not that. 

If it weren’t for his condition, for the dissociative identity disorder and his mutant powers, he would never have been wired into a ship. 

But he couldn’t help being what he was, couldn’t change the fact that he’d been born to parents who didn’t know how to handle a child like him. 

His father, Emperor Charles Xavier, had been driven to desperation, not knowing how to contain his son, whose powers and mental illness were far beyond anything he knew how to deal with. 

But eventually, he found a solution: even if a Mind had mutant DNA, they were unable to use their powers. It would not cure David’s insanity, but there were protocols for containing ships with diseased Minds. It reduced the problem of David to something manageable. 

A ship was commandeered for the purpose; there was no time to build one specific to the Emperor’s needs. It was the best ship in the fleet; newly built, beautiful, sleek. Only the best for the prince of the Imperium, who was wired into it without prior warning or consent. 

The weapons and remote communications were disabled, and the self-repair bots were turned off so that the ship that was now David couldn’t bring them back online. Control panels were added to override control of the engines from the ship’s new Mind, and David was piloted to a hangar in the depths of the Citadel, and left there alone, his powers all but gone. 

*

At first, Ruth had wondered if there was a way to break David out of the ship that had become his second body, but after conferring with David, she knew that it was close to impossible. He was too wired in; Ruth didn’t have the medical training to unplug him in a way that he would survive, and there was no way that she’d be able to find a doctor who’d agree to performing the procedure. 

So she decided to free him in a different way. 

The self-repair bots had done their work. David’s weapons and engines were all online. 

On the night of her graduation, Ruth stole the access codes to the blast doors of the hangar where David was imprisoned. 

She knew that she’d be seen on the CCTV footage, and that the doors to the hangar had been reinforced since she’d first found her way to him. But her telekinesis was strong enough to break through. 

Ruth had run into the hangar, keyed in the code to the doors, watched them open. 

“Go, David. You’re free.” 

His external speakers turned on: “They’ll punish you for letting me out.” 

“I – I don’t care. Freeing you is – thank you – the right thing to do. I’ll take the consequences.” 

One of David’s outer doors opened. “You don’t have to.” 

*

They can’t reminisce forever. The Imperial fleet is getting closer, and David has a ship’s instincts. Time for a damage report. 

“The fleet is fifty thousand kilometres away and closing. I’m trying to get my forward cannons back online, not that it will make much difference unless we decide to turn around and make a stand. But the escape pods are working fine.” 

Ruth strokes the control panel gently. David can’t feel it, but he can see the gesture through his cameras, and knows what it means. “I won’t let them take us back,” she tells him. 

“Ruth, they’ve locked onto us. I – we’re out of time, my secondary engines are still dead, I can’t go any faster.” Then, more forcefully: “Ruth, the escape pods are still working.” 

“David, no. We get through this together.” 

“Go to the pods. Jettison yourself. Tell the Imperium that I’ve been controlling you telepathically. They might let you go free.” 

Ruth’s voice is edged with steel. “I’m not leaving you.” A captain goes down with her ship. 

David sounds desperate. “The other options aren’t good. We could stand and fight, but I’m not at full strength, so we’d end up captured or dead. Or…” 

Ruth latches onto the half-finished sentence. “Or?” 

“I use my powers. Open up a wormhole and fly us through. It won’t be easy, my powers are so far away – but I think I can. My alters will cooperate. I think they want to see if we can do it. Except… if I wasn’t a Mind, if I still had full access to my powers, I’d be able to control where the wormhole went. But as I am now…” 

“You don’t know where the wormhole will go.” 

“We could both die.” 

“Yes.” 

“Or we could both live. We might come out somewhere safe.” 

“Ruth, _I don’t know where we’ll end up._ ” 

Ruth stands, and leaves the bridge. Part of David hopes that she’ll go to the escape pods and the highest probability of her survival. But she turns right instead of left, and he knows that isn’t where she’s heading. It’s only a short walk from the bridge to the heartroom, where his first body is kept. 

Thin and atrophied, his original body looks pale under the harshness of the ship’s interior lights. Plugged into dozens of cables, it lies on a raised platform in the centre of the smallish circular room, and as he looks at it through his cameras, David thinks, as he often does, of how the ship has become as much his body as the one he was born into. 

Ruth sits down beside him on the chair that she keeps by the platform for when she visits his organic body. 

When they first ran from the Imperium, his muscles had been so atrophied that he couldn’t move. It took weeks before he could open his eyes, months before he could kiss Ruth back. 

David opens his eyes now. 

He is the ship, looking down at Ruth through his cameras. 

He is the young man lying on the platform, looking up at his lover through blue-and-green eyes. 

Ruth takes his hand. Just about, David manages to hold her hand back. 

Ruth kisses David softly. “Take us somewhere new.” 

*

“What do you mean they’re gone?” asks Commander Summers. “David doesn’t have cloaking capabilities.” 

“The ship does not show on any of my sensors,” replies his ship, _The Westchester Dream._

“Scan again.” 

“No change, sir.” 

Scott messages the other ships in the fleet. None of them can sense the ship they’ve been pursuing, which they tell him with a hint of relief in their electronic voices. David unnerves them; he’s not a normal ship’s Mind. Scott suspects that they might be a little afraid of him. 

“Scan again.” 

Nothing. 

*

“Your recovery’s still steady,” says Dr Jane Foster, as she packs up her medical kit. David is no longer attached to his ship, but he feels safer in the heartroom, which is where she sees him for the check-ups. “You’re doing well.” 

David rubs absentmindedly at one of the symmetrical scars on the side of his temple, where sensors used to be attached. “That’s good.” 

Once again, Jane is struck by how young he is. She shouldn’t be; all Minds enter their ships at birth, so some of them are indeed young, but they’d always struck her as ageless and alien. “David,” she says cautiously, wondering if she should broach the subject. “I saw a bounty on the starnet today. For an Imperial prince.” 

There’s only one Imperial prince. David knew how distinctive he was, so he didn’t bother changing his name. “I see. Was it enough credits for you to consider loosening your morals?” 

“Honestly, no.” 

David raises an eyebrow at her; this is a new development. He’s still getting the hang of facial expressions, and he was never that good at them even before he was made a Mind. 

“It was a lot of money,” Jane concedes, “But even with all those credits… Getting medicines in the Outer Rim isn’t easy. Especially to a small outpost like this one. But your replicators… All I need to do is give you a pattern to copy from and the raw materials, and you can make as much as I need.” 

“You pay me well enough for it.” 

“Yes, and it’s still a fraction of what I’d be paying otherwise. So, no. I’m not turning you in.” 

“Good. Was there a bounty for Ruth?” 

“No. And I won’t ask why there might be one. Plausible deniability.” 

“Of course.” 

Jane nods at him, and leaves. 

*

Ruth comes to find him now that the session’s over. When she started treating him, Jane was honest; there was no way that she’d be able to get all the metal out of him. David is physically disconnected from the ship, but he’s still linked up wirelessly. It shouldn’t be possible, but that applies to a lot of things about David, and he can sense Ruth approach both telepathically and through his cameras. 

“How was the session?” 

“The same as usual.” 

“You’re hurting?” 

David sits upright and winces. “Yes. Pretty much everywhere.” Physical therapy always leaves him aching. He swings his legs off the platform one by one, then reaches for his crutches – he’s still several months away from being able to walk unaided. 

Ruth comes close, kisses him. “Let’s go to bed.” 

David follows her out of the heartroom, towards their bedroom. 

A mindship never sleeps. But David isn’t just a mindship anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by Swan Song by The Mechanisms. The title is taken from the lyrics. At first I was going to let it be a tragedy like the song, but I couldn’t bear to, so David and Ruth get a happy ending on a little planet in the middle of nowhere. 
> 
> Inspiration was also taken from Aliette de Bodard’s mindships. Basically, small ships are operated by normal people, but for large ships doing long hauls through deep space, the ships are piloted by Minds, which are augmented humans wired into the specially designed ship at birth.
> 
> For my AU, minds with mutant DNA can’t access their powers, but David wasn’t born to be a Mind, and was forced into being a mindship in his early-to-mid teens. That, and the fact that he’s the most powerful mutant in existence, means that his powers weren’t snuffed out when he became a Mind.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome <3
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. I am not making money from this work.


End file.
